Colt was standing, arms folded, watching. He had a sort of dark fierceness in his expression, and despite his gaze, she guessed he was far away. Maybe back in Sudan. Or any of the other dangerous places he’d been that he didn’t talk about.

Places he was someday going back to.

“I’m going to tweak the sequence, do another computation,” Zoey said.

They’d spent their first day in the lab just sequencing the ancient virus they’d gotten from McMaster, using targeted enrichment and synthetic molecules that matched the S-poxR genome. Then they’d resequenced them into a 200,000-genome DNA strand that approximated the Russian pox.

They’d spent the last two days trying to approximate the horsepox sample to the Russian pox.

“I don’t understand why our notes aren’t accurate. Did Faheem change something and not document it?”

“Maybe we just don’t have the right sequence for the ancient virus. I’d give just about anything for the original . . .” Zoey sat down at her computer.

“By the time we get our hands on that, it could be too late,” Tae said.

Colt rapped on the window, pointed at his watch. She glanced at the clock through the window. No wonder her stomach growled. “It’s nearly seven p.m.”

“What?” Zoey looked up. Sighed. “I am hungry.”

“You think? It’s too much work to stop and eat—”

Colt rapped on the window again.

“What’s his deal?” Zoey said as she finished her update on the computer.

“He’s been here for twelve hours. My guess is that he’s a little grumpy.”

Actually, he’d been grumpy for three days, if she were accurate.

Right after she’d told him that she’d . . . yes, she’d sort of dropped the L-word on him. What. An. Idiot.

She wouldn’t label his grumpy behavior a full-out sprint from their relationship, but after she’d stitched up Pete, she’d half expected—okay, hoped—that Colt might be waiting up for her. Yes, it had been late, so she wasn’t completely surprised that he’d retired, but . . .

With everything inside her, she wanted to return to their conversation, maybe roll it back.

She didn’t love him. Didn’t . . . but yes, she’d been a mess just thinking about him, well, doing what he did.

It didn’t help that in the back of her mind, she heard her mother’s scream when the Navy came to the door. But that was different. Her mother hadn’t known her father was doing something special ops-y.

Tae had her eyes wide open when it came to Colt.

So maybe his cold shoulder was the best, for both of them. Because any more time in his arms, around his magnetic, self-deprecating charm just might push her right over the edge and . . .